First Listen: Bill Fay, 'Who Is The Sender?'

April 20, 2015 3:03 AM

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Cult songwriter Bill Fay was never in a hurry to follow up his 1971 classic Time Of The Last Persecution, but he's been on a comparative tear since coming back with a decades-in-the-making album just two years ago. The title of that 2012 return, Life Is People, conveyed part of Fay's plain, uncomplicated humanist charm, and the new Who Is The Sender? signals his more questing cosmic aim.

That both can coexist and commingle in the same song, with registers shifting from phrase to phase, is integral to Fay's longtime appeal. (The list of distinguished artists who celebrate him includes Jim O'Rourke, Jeff Tweedy and Nick Cave.) And both are tapped in great abundance in 13 new songs tha...